


We brought our failures with us

by lowriseflare, threeguesses



Series: different theres and elsewheres [3]
Category: Pitch (TV 2016)
Genre: Did we mention his wife had an affair?, F/M, MIKE LAWSON HUMAN DISASTER, post-Season 1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-16
Updated: 2017-01-16
Packaged: 2018-09-17 20:43:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9343067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lowriseflare/pseuds/lowriseflare, https://archiveofourown.org/users/threeguesses/pseuds/threeguesses
Summary: The third night of spring training the whole team treks out to what passes for a fancy club in Peoria, Arizona, a dim, long room with leather banquettes and a cocktail list full of martinis named after desert flowers.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Follows [Sometimes a part of the body just hurts](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8858872) and [Other people staring at their phones](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9000133). We're just over here, speaking Season 2 into being. Title is Bob Hicok, _Go Greyhound_.

The third night of spring training the whole team treks out to what passes for a fancy club in Peoria, Arizona, a dim, long room with leather banquettes and a cocktail list full of martinis named after desert flowers. Ginny sighs and orders a beer, dropping the menu onto the table a little harder than she means to.

“What’s your problem, mami?” Livan asks, bumping her shoulder with his warm one. Ginny purposely sat beside him in the booth.

 _Shit._ “What?” she asks. She can tell Mike is listening down the other end of the table, the dumb way his body is half-turned. “No problem, I was just thinking we should dance.” She gestures around at the empty club. “You know. Before I die of boredom.”

Livan laughs at her. “Drink first,” he commands. “Then dancing.”

The service is achingly slow. Ginny fiddles with the menu, her whole body vibrating with excess energy. She's technically only here for moral support, stuck watching from the bench while everyone else runs through the workouts. She didn't even show up early with the other pitchers and catchers, trekking in after the fact with the rest of the team. She’s barely a month into rehabbing her arm, nothing but long tosses and boring, grueling elbow exercises. She’s about ready to claw out of her own skin.

Their drinks finally arrive, the club slowly starting to fill up as the sun sets. Ginny has yet to see a single black person not associated with the Padres in this entire city. “Hurry up,” she tells Livan, shifting impatiently in her seat. When he doesn’t chug fast enough she flicks the bottom of his beer bottle, spilling it down his chin.

“ _Joder_ ,” he says, grabbing her around the neck like she’s someone’s tagalong sister. Both of them knock into Voorhies, kids at the adults table. Mike is still watching, his gaze as heavy as a stone. Ginny looks away first. They haven't talked since he called back in January, shot the shit with her for twenty minutes, then casually dropped that he’d been back with his ex-wife since just before Thanksgiving. Honestly, Ginny would be fine if they never spoke again.

“Okay,” she says once Livan’s finally drained his beer. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, widening his eyes like, _happy_ _?_ “ _Now_ can we dance?”

“Yes,” Livan says, signaling the waitress for a pair of tequila shots. “Now we can dance.”

So. They dance. They dance for a long time, actually, to Drake and Kanye and the Weekend, Ginny tossing her hair and letting Livan feel her up a little in a friendly way, his confident hands on her hips. They dance until she can almost forget she's in the middle of nowhere with a team that's got no use for her except as a stupid mascot, with a captain who—

Whatever.

Eventually Livan bails on her to chat up some locals, a cluster of girls in cut-offs and those big, loose curls that white women on tv always have. Ginny heads for the bar, ordering another beer from the bored bartender. So far, the good people of Peoria have been mostly unimpressed with the Padres.

She's not there more than a minute before Mike plants himself beside her, close enough that the point of his elbow brushes against hers. “Baker,” he says. He’s wearing one of his ridiculous patterned button ups, the ones that make Ginny think of Southern frat boys. “Were you planning on saying hello at any point?”

He’s teasing, Ginny cannot believe him. She flushes dull and hot. “I said hello,” she manages, which is technically true: when she first walked into the clubhouse the other day he looked up from his locker and said, _Hey Baker_ , and she said, _Hey Lawson_ , before heading back to her changing room.

Mike rolls his eyes. “Baker,” he says again, in a voice like she’s being a baby—but also, and she isn’t sure if she’s imagining this or not, like he’s a tiny bit wounded that for once she’s not falling all over herself to follow him around. “Come on.”

“What?” she snaps, more nastily than she means to. Lord, this is exactly why she made that rule about not dating her teammates. She and Lawson didn’t even _date_.

Mike stares at her for a second. Then he reaches for her, taking the beer bottle from her hand and setting it on the bar. “Let’s go,” he says. Before Ginny knows what’s happening he’s walking her right out of the club, his palm wrapped warm and sweaty around her wrist. She yanks it away before they can get more than three steps outside the door.

“What the hell, Lawson?” she hisses, crossing her arms and planting her feet. Mike keeps walking, skirting the empty rope line. “Come back inside, everyone’s gonna notice.”

“Like they aren’t gonna notice you treating your captain like he pissed in your fucking cornflakes?” He beckons her over, away from the windows. “You’re the one making this obvious, Ginny, not me.”

Ginny opens her mouth to deny it and blushes instead. She’s never felt the age difference more acutely than she does in this precise moment. He’s dating his ex- _wife_ , for fuck’s sake. Their marriage lasted a third of Ginny’s life. “Don’t call me that,” she says finally, hugging her stomach and looking away. It’s a sickeningly romantic night, nothing but flat desert and stars and empty, dusty streets. Ginny wants to take off at a dead run and never look back.

“What, ‘Ginny’?” Mike asks. He’s still using that voice like he thinks she’s being childish. “It’s your name.”

Oh no. Uh-uh. “You _know_ why not,” Ginny says, pointing a finger at his chest. “Like, are you for real right now, Lawson? You dragged me out of a _bar_. You do that to Wells a lot? Shrek? Hold their hands and call them by their first names, make sure you’re still their favorite player?” Her voice is rising dangerously and she forces herself to drop it, to take a deep, even breath. “Fuck you. I am not the problem here, thanks.”

“You’re not the—” Mike breaks off, rubs a rough hand through his beard. “You know what? You win. What do you want from me, huh?”

Ginny almost laughs. What does she _want?_ She wants her elbow to be back to a hundred percent, yesterday. She wants to play in the show. She wants him not to have told her he wasn’t getting back together with Rachel that night in her hospital room, and most of all she wants not to have believed him when he did. She has never felt so dumb in her entire life. “I want you to treat me like you’d treat any other player,” she says finally, jamming her hands into the pockets of her hoodie. “Same thing I’ve wanted since the day I got called up.”

Mike doesn’t even bother to roll his eyes. “Really?”

Of course not. Ginny huffs out a noisy breath. “You’re an asshole, you know that?”

Mike looks at her for a long moment in the light coming off the building, his face unreadable. Suddenly it feels like they’re standing very close together. “Well,” he says, and he’s not using that voice like she’s his bratty little sister anymore, he isn’t using it at _all._  “That’s a fact.”

Ginny rubs her palms over her jeans, her heart rate picking up. For a moment they’re both silent, watching each other. Their faces are very close.

“Are we seriously doing this _again?”_ she asks finally. Her mouth is dry.

Mike almost smiles. “No,” he says, and it's not until he leans in that Ginny realizes what he means.

He stops halfway. Of course he stops halfway. “I’m not—” Ginny starts, then breaks off in frustration. His mouth is inches from hers and it's the ugliest kind of anticipation Ginny has ever experienced, like waiting to get hit with a beanball and with exactly the same instinctive flinch. “Mike, this wasn't cute last time either, you're just making me ner—”

He kisses her. He doesn't touch her beforehand so only their lips are connected, both of them bending forward at the waist like a cartoon drawing of kids kissing. It's chaste, and not a little awkward. Then Ginny makes a sound and suddenly his hands are on her, palms closing over her ears and dragging her forward. Ginny reaches for him too, curling her arms around his waist and wrenching her mouth open because he hasn't done it yet, and what the fuck are they waiting for. There's a moment of teeth clacking messily and then his tongue is in her mouth, and holy shit. Holy _shit_.

Mike seems to agree, groaning so quietly she almost doesn’t hear him. “ _Fuck_ , Baker,” he mutters into her mouth. For one heartbreaking second she thinks he’s going to stop, but instead he just nudges her back into the shadows on the side of the club, where no one can see them unless they come looking, then ducks his head and kisses her again. Ginny grabs at the slippery fabric of his shirt. Now that they’re in it she can tell that he knows what he’s doing, the way he works one warm hand underneath her hair and squeezes the back of her neck rhythmically, the bulk of his body fitted tightly against hers. Shit, she wants to kiss him straight into the post-season. She wants to kiss him until she drops dead. She wants to kiss him more than she wants to play baseball, and the moment she has that thought she opens her eyes.

“Wait,” she says, pulling away and putting her hands on his shoulders. “Just wait a sec, we can’t—” She’s panting like she just sprinted ten miles. “You have a _wife_ , Lawson.”

 _She’s not my wife_ , Mike almost answers. Ginny sees him think it, and she sees him wince.

“Yeah,” he says finally. His palm is still wrapped around the back of her neck. He extracts it slowly, untangling his fingers from her curls.

Once, when Ginny was fifteen, the tabloids linked him to Halle Berry. It wasn’t true. She doesn’t know why she’s thinking about that now. “Yeah,” she says, shoving her hands in her back pockets. He’s old, she tells herself. He’s old, and he has a bit of a gut. “Let’s go back inside.”

“Baker,” he starts.

Lord, he’s giving her a face like he’s _sorry_. Ginny feels like someone kicked her in the stomach. “It’s fine,” she says. “Leave it. We don’t need to do the thing.”

That catches him off-guard somehow, his eyes darkening. For a second he looks almost hurt. “It's not about—” he breaks off, yanking at his beard. “Yeah, Baker, okay,” he says finally. “We don't have to do the thing.”

“Okay,” Ginny echoes, then turns and heads back into the restaurant. She doesn't look behind her to check if he's following.


End file.
